The Director General of Trade and Consumer Affairs for the Canary Islands has finally approved the first of two commercial licenses for Mercadona to open in Lanzarote.
Gustavo Matos acknowledged that there have been years of administrative difficulties, but that the release of this license for the first supermarket in the polígono industrial estate of Argana in Arrecife marks a new stage in the sector. The Director General stated that the increase in competition will specially benefit the consumers, on an island where the cost of shopping is the highest in the archipelago.
The news means that we should now see the first Mercadona supermarket open it’s doors in the capital of Lanzarote before the end of 2014. Initially Mercadona applied to Arrecife council for the license, however when the company decided to increase the size of the store to 2,111 m3 it then exceeded the councils authority, which is limited to commercial premises up to 1,650 m3.
A second license has already been applied to open another store in the Valterra area of Arrecife. In December the company presented a license to the Ayuntamiento of San Bartolomé to open a third supermarket in the industrial area of Playa Honda, which is expected to be operational by mid 2015.
Mercadona will be investing over 19 million euros to open their first two hypermarkets in the capital of Lanzarote.